En smakebit på søndag: Under A Pole Star

En smakebit på søndag

På söndagarna är det dags för En smakebit på söndag som  Astrid Therese Betraktninger  håller i. Alla delar med sig ett stycke ur den bok en just nu läser. Inga spoilers!

Nu har jag gjort min sista semestervecka. Det har varit väldigt fint väder hela veckan. I början på veckan läste jag, plastade in böcker som jag ska ta till jobbet, plockade krusbär och gjorde mer krusbärsmarmelad.

På torsdagen åkte jag upp till stugan igen och var där till igår med brorsan, Mya, Theo och Thor. Det blev många bad, båtturer och sol. I fredags åkte vi till Järvzoo i Järvsö och tittade på alla djur.

Idag kommer jag att läsa vidare i Malibu Rising, s 93-192, inför träffen på instagram ikväll. Det blir också en del fixande här hemma och några förberedelser inför jobbstarten imorgon.

Denna veckas smakbit kommer från Under A Pole Star av Stef Penney, från sidan 11-12:

Flora Mackie was twelve when she first crossed the Artic Circle. The previous November, her mother had died, and her father did not know what to do with his only child. He was the Dundee whaling captain, William Mackie. Flora took after him in looks and brusqueness of manner, and showed no sign of her mother’s grace. Elsa Mackie had been a pretty woman who delighted in her decorative capacity. Her husband was proud of her, but a whaling captain’s wife in Dundee – no, anywhere – had limited opportunities for displaying her charms. She had been horrified by the process of producing Flora, and was critical of the results, having a tendency to bemoan her daughter’s shortcomings: chiefly, hoydenishness and a thick waist. Before Flora could talk, Mrs Mackie had developed mysterious, lingering ailments, and left Flora’s upbringing largely to a nursemaid, Moira Adams, who was efficient, but had a heart of granite. In the last weeks Mrs Mackie’s life, after the captain had come home from a successful season in the north, he and his daughter sat together in the front room while, upstairs, Mrs Mackie consulted a succession of doctors. When she died, the widower was not so much grief-stricken as haunted by guilt – if he had stayed at home instead of leaving her for up to two years at a time, he thought, she might not have died. What if the same happened to Flora?
Other captains took their wives north, he reasoned – to himself, since he was not a man people argued with openly – so why should he not take his daughter?